Don’t Clear-Cut Timber-Related Jobs

The nation’s taxpayers and several Northwest communities are harvesting the fruit of decades of polarized timber debate and environmental obstructionism: lumber-mill closures, layoffs and a subsidized bailout.

In Colville, lack of timber supply and unfair Canadian competition has forced Vaagen Bros. Lumber to accept a Chryslerstyle bailout, which preserves 250 jobs. Federal taxpayers are fronting the $7.75 million loan package to keep the third-largest private employer in Stevens County afloat.

Meanwhile, Louisiana Pacific has decided to close two mills and lay off 218 well-paid workers in Post Falls and Walla Walla.

The closures may thrill environmental extremists, who seem to care little for human costs. But they will devastate local economies. The shutdowns would be unnecessary - if we had a sensible federal timber policy. The trees are available in the federal forests.

Cooler heads on both sides of the debate must help the waffling Clinton administration fashion a policy that provides a sustainable timber supply.

Unquestionably, the timber industry now is paying for the rapeand-plunder practices of the past. Environmentalists have become experts at using photos of clear-cuts and stream damage, past and present, to raise funds and lobby gullible Eastern congressmen.

However, the extremists’ appeals of timber sales and their shrill campaign against salvage logging have caused worse economic damage than any clear-cut. Level-headed environmentalists must recognize and repudiate this mischief, and join hands with timber moderates.

Consider what’s at stake.

If Vaagen Bros. Lumber had folded, Stevens County would have lost 875 jobs, directly and indirectly supported by the mill. These jobs go a long way toward feeding Colville’s 4,580 residents.

Unfortunately, no one’s going to bail out the L-P plant at Post Falls. In two months, the town will lose one of its largest taxpayers and 113 jobs that average $11 per hour. That’s not peanuts in a tourism-dominated economy.

Timber industry spokesman Ken Kohli has posed the $64,000 question: “You wonder how many more blows we’ll have to take before the federal government realizes that we need a predictable flow of timber off public forests.”

Kohli shouldn’t hold his breath.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board